In a move sure to pay off, @MittRomney embraces his record at Bain Capital in a Wall Street Journal article. @WSJ

John_hancock_panorama

Mitt Romney has taken more than his share of flack for his connection at Bain Capital. As the Republican National Convention prepares to declare him an official candidate, Romney starts a new meme in his campaign. "Yes, I am responsible for Bain Capital and I am proud of that record". As most of the memes in Romney's campaigns have started, Romney kicks this meme off in the highly visible pages of the Wall Street Journal.

He shouldn't have waited, but even though he comes late to the conversation with this declaration, it is an example of this idea from Romney's article.

"The experience taught me that when you see a problem, run toward it or it will only get worse." Romney is clearly running into the Bain Capital flackmasters range, and his public relations team have provided a suit of Teflon.

Proceeding in the manner of a Harvard School of Business case studies course, Romney know is happy to say that with Bain Capital, he "built these".

Staples  http://www.staples.com/
Bright Horizons /http://www.brookstone.com/
Brookstone  http://promotions.brighthorizons.com
Wesley Jessen http://www.1800contacts.com/
Accuride http://www.accuridecorp.com/
Steel Dynamics  http://www.steeldynamics.com/
Damon

I see that Damon is a hot spot that Romney daringly discusses in his Wall Street Journal article. Damon is another place where the flakmasters are firing salvos. Damon, if I am to believe the web traffic, was fined for submitting unnecessary medical tests to boost revenue. Romney says he was duly diligent and investigated the matter before the issue blew up.

Bain Capital had a good track record in many of its business projects.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444270404577605140607907860.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

No more banning Bain from the conversation:

http://www.baincapital.com/


Photography Credit:

John Hancock Panorama
Date 8 June 2010
Author RhythmicQuietude

How is the @JoeBiden debate with @PaulRyanVP going to play out in Danville Kentucky October 11, 2012?

Biden

Biden has established, perhaps, two reputations. One, he's one of America's longest serving senators. He has a reputation for being able to speak across the aisle and develop coalitions to make legislative progress. He works well in elbow to elbow conversations. Two, he has a reputation for making statements that the flackmasters see as rising partridges above the auditoriums of America. And the flackmasters have taken many, many rhetorical blasts at his comments in Danville, Virginia. One wonders, how will he handle going response to response with Paul Ryan?

Ryan impresses me as cordial. Indeed, I am amazed how respectful he speaks when he speaks about President Obama. Biden strikes me as collegial, and he'll regard Ryan as a colleague. This makes me wonder if this will be treated as a duel, where both men take ten paces, turn, and fire over the opponent's left shoulder. Ryan doesn't need a knock-out blow against Biden. Biden will be well rehearsed, and will have good answers for any of a range of questions. I anticipate a draw.

Ryan needs to be perceived as a man who has toed the Romney line, so he will be there to deliver his comments that forward the dissemination of the Romney message. Ryan has to take care not to freak the swing voters out by striking too caustically and boldly at Biden. He just has to make his points and not speak to overcome. We need comfort factor with Ryan, so he'll just have a conversation onstage with Biden.

Biden is known for wit and self-effacement. As a seventy year old man, I think he'll be able to charm the respectful Ryan and maybe land a few jests. I am looking forward to this match between a pair of men who have almost three decades difference in their ages.

This will be a chess game played in a televised drawing room in Danville, Kentucky, the kind two men play for the entertainment of onlookers.


Breitbart Blog has begun to speculate on the match up:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/14/Team-Obama-Confident-Biden-Can-Take-On-Ryan-In-Debate

He's a family man, @BarackObama, and if he's outspent and loses at the polls, he can always go back to his family and his legacy.

Barack_obama_family_portrait_2

He's a family man, Barack, and if he's outspent and loses at the polls, he can always go back to his family and his legacy. Although, only one of those possibilities is coming to fruition right now. It is quite possible Barack Obama's fund raising machine will fail to raise the amount of money necessary to stay even or ahead of the fund raisers and bundlers who are working to put R & R into the White House. Right now, it looks as if Obama - Biden has a lead in the polls and the Democrats have had a flack attack ready to stymie the Romney and Ryan ticket. It's been exceptionally effective, truly poisoning the Republican well. And most of the message has been propagated for free by the Democratic faithful manning their volunteer social media stations. I think it will be the first debate before anyone gets a real clear look at Romney the man.

However, much of the Democratic flack falls inside the friendly camp. Many of those social media flacks understand little about penetrating through belief systems. Obama's whole armament of advertisement doesn't seem to talk to Middle America, who is just looking for a better deal on the economy and taxes. We can barely think about our tax bill, and the ads require me to think and be envious of the rich. That's a cognitive task for me a bit beyond my simple level of thinking. I saw a message approved by Barack Obama tonight and the tone was rich and pleasing when Obama approved the message from the Oval Office. It took a satirical tone shockingly fast. It changed to a putrid palette when it began talking about Romney. I though I had entered the world of a cartoon.

R & R. That's Romney and Ryan. Where did the Romney camp come up with the arrogant R without a back line, dribbling the American flag to the lower serif of the R? I love how Pete Souza has captured the connectedness of the family, Barack clasping a hand of each of his daughter. I guess I have to ask all the candidates to reveal their last Christmas card pictures so I can contemplate each one.

Official portrait by Pete Souza of the Obama family in the Oval Office.
11 December 2011

Media_httpwwwwhitehou_gfdpf

Pete Souza, official White House photographer

March 2011, in a conversation with the Economic Club of Chicago, @PaulRyanVP said the world Exceptionalism.

Paul_ryan_with_barack_obama_02

March 2011, in a conversation with the Economic Club of Chicago, @PaulRyanVP said the world Exceptionalism. I was watching Ryan answering questions from the moderator before a banquet hall of Chicago's finest, and Exceptionalism is practically the last word he spoke on camera. It is amusing to learn that this term, cherished by American neo-conservatives, was first spoken by Joseph Stalin in 1929, chiding a group of American communists. Marxism states that the capitalist societies must collapse because of debt and too much goods that go unsold. That might sound like the financial crisis of the 2008, which American society survived. Our American communists, awfully close to Mother Russia in those days, answered that American ingenuity and resources made us immune to such collapses. And yes, American is exceptional due to the lack of rigid class distinctions. And that's when Stalin pushed back with the term, American Exceptionalism. Stalin didn't think American was an exception to Marxist doctrine. That was the sarcasm of Stalin, who locked up and tortured more American communists than the record reveals. Read the biography of Kenneth Rexroth, who said a final farewell to many American Communists taking a free trip to Russia. From Stalin's lips to Ryan's speech, the term American Exceptionalism has taken a longer linguistic journey than the word Liberalism.

The goal of Rom Bama speaks is to give each candidate a fair hearing. So I have listened again to Mr. Ryan's comments to the economic club. He raises the specter of shared scarcity, a time when the United States Government has to raise tax rates so high to pay off the interest on the American debt, individuals and corporations have to pay tax rates approaching one hundred percent. He also raises the bogeyman of the American bureaucratic elite, which he claims has the power to pick winners and losers, including elites on a medical rationing board with the power to pick who gets essential treatment or not. In many ways, he sounds similar to Governor Rick Snyder, who appeared upon the Michigan political scene as a kind of tax cutting tyrant. Get the economy moving by lowering taxes, make up the numbers with increased economic activity to tax. Problems in a good economy tend to dissolve in the flow of prosperity. The man can speak and speak well, delivering his ideas in a practiced way, polished after nights and nights of town halls in Chicagoland Wisconsin. You have to like the man for his robust manner of delivery and for his knowledge of conservative economics. He raises a cheer by saying: No one has gotten rich betting against the United States. I have to check if that's true. George Soros went up a quantum level of wealth by betting against the British Pound.

When he speaks to answer questions, there is a small tick in his delivery, as if he were about to stutter or speak incorrectly. I have a feeling that's when a burst of alternative thoughts arrive to his mind to be spoken.

In my days of being a Young Gun, I would have followed Paul Ryan and his philosophy. It sounds so much like the philosophy of the men I smoked cigars with at Michigan State University in the 1980s, all of them reading the Chicago school of economics, Uncle Milty Friedman, the National Review and Ayn Rand. Today, I know that he speaks from a strong pole of an American dialectic, and no matter the result of his three month run for Vice President, he will pull the American politic rightward.

If you like this article, and if you read it on Tumblr, please click an ad to support the Rom Bama conversation!

Paul Ryan at the Economic Club of Chicago, May 17, 2011. The man makes great Green Bay Packers jokes.

Apparently @MMFlint, Michael Moore, despairs of Barack Obama's ability to triumph over "President Romney".

Moore has his reservations about President Obama, and that concerns me. Moore spoke to Piers Anthony Sunday night, and Moore expressed dismay that the president spoke in Aurora, Colorado, to the families of the lost, and the president said current gun control laws are sufficient. It might help for me to review a transcript of the conversation with Morgan, but that's what I took away.

Moore spoke from the pulpit at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids last Thursday, and he raised the prospect of a Romney victory. Obama swept to office in 2008 on a wave of popular enthusiasm that might not be repeated. Moore pointed out the The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, has a vote for Obama. However, Springsteen might not perform concerts to raise funds, get young people registered and turn out the people to go to the polls. Obama needs this enthusiasm, which can't be bought.

Enthusiasm can level the fund raising equation, and without enthusiasm, the Obama dollar doesn't go father. And if Obama is beat in fund raising and can't leverage the social media X factor, Romney's effort might triumph. Obama will need two voters for every three that reaches the polls due to voter verification or "voter suppression", terms depending upon your viewpoint.

Much is going wrong in the Obama camp. For example, shaming Anne Romney for owning a fine horse will proved to be beating the proverbial dead-horse. The Obama camp has to conduct better analysis
of wedge issues, better examination of the depth psychology of the voters on the margins. Sing to the Obama choir yes, but also find a way to talk to those disaffected 2008 Obama voters.

Michael Moore in New York City's Union Square Barnes & Noble to discuss his book Here Comes Trouble.


13 September 2011
Author David Shankbone, http://blog.shankbone.org/about/

Piers Morgan
http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/

Here comes trouble, and maybe for President Obama's re-election prospects.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/here-comes-trouble-michael-moore-book

The Rapidian comes away with an excellent story discussing Moore's appearance at Fountain Street Church, last Thursday night: http://therapidian.org/grand-rapids-public-library-presents-michael-moore-michigan-author

Mlive covered the Thursday, July 26th, 2012 event from an entirely
different angle:
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/07/michael_moore_fires_up_fountai.html

(download)

Apparently @MMFlint, Michael Moore, despairs of Barack Obama's ability to triumph over "President Romney".

Michael_moore_2011_shankbone_4

Moore has his reservations about President Obama, and that concerns
me. Moore spoke to Piers Anthony Sunday night, and Moore expressed
dismay that the president spoke in Aurora, Colorado, to the families
of the lost, and the president said current gun control laws are
sufficient. It might help for me to review a transcript of the
conversation with Morgan, but that's what I took away.

Moore spoke from the pulpit at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids
last Thursday, and he raised the prospect of a Romney victory. Obama
swept to office in 2008 on a wave of popular enthusiasm that might not
be repeated. Moore pointed out the The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, has a
vote for Obama. However, Springsteen might not perform concerts to
raise funds, get young people registered and turn out the people to go
to the polls. Obama needs this enthusiasm, which can't be bought.
Enthusiasm can level the fund raising equation, and without
enthusiasm, the Obama dollar doesn't go father. And if Obama is beat
in fund raising and can't leverage the social media X factor, Romney's
effort might triumph. Obama will need two voters for every three that
reaches the polls due to voter verification or "voter suppression",
terms depending upon your viewpoint.

Much is going wrong in the Obama camp. For example, shaming Anne
Romney for owning a fine horse will proved to be beating the
proverbial dead-horse. The Obama camp has to conduct better analysis
of wedge issues, better examination of the depth psychology of the
voters on the margins. Sing to the Obama choir yes, but also find a
way to talk to those disaffected 2008 Obama voters.

Michael Moore in New York City's Union Square Barnes & Noble to
discuss his book Here Comes Trouble.


13 September 2011
Author David Shankbone, http://blog.shankbone.org/about/

Piers Morgan
http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/

Here comes trouble, and maybe for President Obama's re-election prospects.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/here-comes-trouble-michae...

The Rapidian comes away with an excellent story discussing Moore's
appearance at Fountain Street Church, last Thursday night:
http://therapidian.org/grand-rapids-public-library-presents-michael-moore-mic...

Mlive covered the Thursday, July 26th, 2012 event from an entirely
different angle:
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/07/michael_moo...